at her. The Bingtown woman had been quiet and grave of late, and distant. It was almost as if she had returned to being the stranger among them, the fine lady from Bingtown who had startled all of the Rain Wild keepers when they had first discovered she was a member of their expedition. Initially, she had competed with Thymara for Sintara’s attention, but Thymara’s competence as a hunter had soon won Sintara’s belly if not her heart. Nevertheless, Alise had created her own place in the expedition company. She did not hunt, but she had helped groom and tend dragon injuries as best she could. And she had known things, information about dragons and Elderlings that had helped them along the way. For a time, it had seemed she was one of them.
But Alise had not been chosen as keeper by any of the dragons, and Rapskal’s declaration that the city belonged to the keepers had thrust her to one side. Tats still winced when he thought of that stark confrontation. When they had first reached Kelsingra, Alise had asserted her authority and decreed that nothing must be touched or changed until she had had a chance to thoroughly document the dead city. Tats had simply accepted her rule, as had the other keepers. It surprised him now to realize how much authority he had conceded to her simply because she was an adult and a scholar.
But then had come the confrontation between her and Rapskal. Rapskal had been the only one of the keepers with free access to the city. His dragon Heeby had been the first to take flight, and unlike the other dragons, she had not minded carrying a passenger on her back. Heeby had provided passage to the city for Alise many times. But when Rapskal and Thymara had ventured to the city to explore and had returned the next day with a trove of warm Elderling garments to share with the other ragged keepers, Alise had been incensed. He had never seen the genteel Bingtown woman so angry. She had cried out to them that they must put the garments down ‘this instant and stop tugging at them’.
And that was when Rapskal had defied her. He had told her, in his direct way, that the city was alive and belonged to the Elderlings, not to her. He had pointed out that he and his fellow keepers were Elderlings while she was and would remain a human. Despite his own heartbreak that day, despite seeing Thymara beside Rapskal, Tats had felt a flash of deep pity for Alise. And a stripe of shame and regret to see her so quickly retreat and withdraw from their company. When he thought about it now, he felt a bit guilty that he had not at least knocked at her door to ask if she was all right. He had been nursing his own heartbreak, but still, he should have gone to ask after her. The truth was, he hadn’t even noticed she had been missing until she reappeared.
Did her effort at conversation mean she had recovered from Rapskal’s rebuke? He hoped so.
He smiled at her as he replied, ‘Fente has changed. She doesn’t need me as she once did.’
‘Before long, none of them will.’ She was not looking at him. Her gaze tracked his dragon across the sky. ‘You will all have to start thinking of yourselves in a different way. Your own lives will come to have more significance to you. The dragons will take command of their own fates. And probably ours as well.’
‘What do you mean?’
Now she looked at him, a direct look with her brows raised as if startled that he did not immediately grasp what she had told him. ‘I mean that dragons will rule the world again. As they used to.’
‘As they used to?’ Tats echoed her words as he followed her toward the riverbank. It had become a new habit for all of them; the keepers and the flightless dragons gathered in the morning on the riverbank to discuss the day’s tasks. He glanced around and for a moment was seized by the beauty of the scene. The keepers were gleaming figures in the fleeting morning mist, for all wore their Elderling garments daily now. Their dragons were scattered across the hillside and along the bank. They were limbering their wings, beating them hard against the meadow grass or stretching out necks and legs. They, too, gleamed brilliantly against the dew-heavy grasses of the wet meadow. At the bottom of the hill, Carson had given over his efforts with Spit and waited for them, Sedric at his side.
The leadership had evolved, Tats realized. For all Rapskal’s charismatic speech when he had returned from Kelsingra, he had not assumed the command as Tats had thought he might. Probably because he was not interested in being a leader. He was handsome and cheerful, beloved by his fellows, but most of them spoke of him with a fond smile rather than deep respect. Rapskal remained as odd as he had always been, introspective one moment and bizarrely social the next. And happy with whom he was. The ambition that would have burned inside Tats was not even a spark to him.
Carson was by years the oldest of those who had taken on a dragon. It seemed natural to cede authority to him, and the hunter did not shirk from it. For the most part, Carson assigned the daily tasks to the keepers, a few to groom and otherwise tend to the remaining dragons, and the rest of them to hunt or fish. If a keeper protested that he had a different task in mind that day, Carson did not let it become an issue. He recognized their individuality and did not attempt to impose his authority on them. As a result, all seemed to accept it.
Alise had quietly claimed some of the menial but necessary tasks of daily living. She tended the smoking racks that preserved fish and meat for them, gathered edible greens and helped groom the dragons. Sylve, never the most successful hunter, had turned her energies to the preparation of meals. At Carson’s suggestion, the keepers had returned to large shared meals. It was strange but nice to return to the communal meals and talk they had shared when they were moving the dragons upriver.
It made him feel a bit less lonely.
‘As they used to, and will again,’ Alise continued. She glanced over at him. ‘Seeing them in flight, watching all of you change … it puts a different light on all that I discovered in the course of my early studies. Dragons were the centre of the Elderling civilizations, with humans a separate population that lived apart from them, in settlements like the ones we found here. Humans raised crops and cattle which they traded to Elderlings in exchange for their wondrous goods. Look at the city across the river, Tats, and ask yourself, how did they feed themselves?’
‘Well, there were herds on the outskirts of the cities. Probably places to grow crops …’
‘Probably. But humans were the ones to do that. Elderlings gave themselves and their lives over to their magic, and to tending the dragons. All they did and built and created was not for themselves, but for the dragons who overshadowed them.’
‘Ruled them? The dragons ruled them?’ He wasn’t enjoying the images in his mind.
‘“Ruled” isn’t quite the right word. Does Fente rule you?’
‘Of course not!’
‘And yet you gave your days over to hunting for her, and grooming her and otherwise caring for her.’
‘But I wanted to do those things.’
Alise smiled. ‘And that is why “ruled” is the wrong word. Charmed? Englamoured? I’m not sure quite how to express it, but you do already know what I mean. If these dragons breed and bring more of their kind into the world, then inevitably they will end up running the world for their own benefit.’
‘That sounds so selfish!’
‘Does it? Isn’t it what humans have done for generations? We claim the land as ours and turn it to our purposes. We change the channels of rivers and the face of the land so that we can travel by boat or grow a crop or graze cattle. And we think it only natural that we should shape the whole world to be comfortable and yielding for humankind. Why should dragons be any different in how they perceive the world?’
Tats was quiet for a time.
‘It may not
